Stepping Up to Leadership

Author

Released

11/20/2013

Learn the seasoned leadership tips of Scott Blanchard, son of Ken Blanchard, the coauthor of The One Minute Manager ®, who is continuing his father's legacy as a global business-training leader. Scott explains how to build a strong leadership foundation by first knowing yourself—your strengths, your weaknesses, and your temperament. Then he discusses the best ways to build relationships, integrity, and trust; get results by building commitment and motivating employees; and chart a path to leadership success.

This course was created and produced by Ken Blanchard Companies ®. We are honored to host this content in our library.

Skill Level Intermediate

43m 47s

Duration

301,433

Views

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(xylophone plays)(light rock music)- Well Scott, thanks so much for meeting me.I really appreciate it.I know you're busyand got a lot of things going onbut one of the things I wanna find out though ishow did you first get started in it?- Yeah, I'm kinda the son of The One Minute Manager.

- Uh huh.- My dad wrote that bookwhen I was a junior in high school.What was kind of interesting about that isI grew up the son of a leadership expertwho became a guru in Iranbut when I was a kid,he was a professorand so I kinda felt like a lab rata little bit as a kid.I mean it was a really...My parents are amazingbut whenever I did anything in the houseor particularly I caused a lot of trouble as a boybut whatever I did,whenever I got in trouble,they would usually sit me down at the kitchen tableand they would literally say "Scott, what's up?"Your behavior, it's in congruentwith the state of family values.

"What's up with that?"And what I do explained kinda my behaviorup against the intentions that I hadand the impact that was created and all that.There was a lot of...It felt like white lights,interrogation as a kidbut I got a lot of lessons from it.- It's pretty interesting when you think about it,when you talk about the whole ideaof most of us would expect we get in trouble,get grounded, something like thatbut you were kinda more...Your parents were going into more of an explorationof what the behavior was.- Right.- How it was impacting people.- Yeah, we didn't get punishedwith extra chores or restrictionor certainly nobody ever smacked us,my sister and I as kids,but we usually had to explainpretty rigorously what we were thinkingand what we would do againhad we had a chance to do it againand it really taught me a lot of things.

One thing that was really importantat the end of each of those conversationsis my dad would always say something like"We've been talking about this long enough."Now what I wanna know is where are you headed,"like where are you headed in life, Scott?"And I'd say "Well first of all,"I'm gonna go to your college."That's the first thing to try to get him off my backbut I knew I had to come up with a pretty good answerand I would typically talk about the ideathat I really wanted the worldto be better for me having been here.- Yeah.- And then I want to make a positive contributionto people and the planet.My parents were idealistsso you had to do somethingabout the planet in there.But seriously, I would say I got a pretty good ideaof where I was goingand then my dad would always say"God, Scott."But your behavior is going in this directionand then you're actually talking about a visionthat's going in this direction.

The big question ishow is the behavior that's going this way,how's that gonna get you to there?- Yeah so they were seeing it asthe two were not matching up.- Yeah, they always said life was pretty simple.He goes "If you have an aspiration,"you need to make sure that your actions"and your activities and your energy is lined up"in that general direction"and if you have an aspiration you're talking about"and you're going in the other direction,"it's not gonna work."- Got it.- And that's what leadership's about.I got fascinated with that from the beginning.Really interesting to see how companies often don't do that.They don't put those two pieces together.- Now did you go into managementright away in collegeor is that something that kinda came in later?- I went to hotel schooland so I got early experiencemanaging restaurants and hotelsand actually did a bunch of internshipsand I started off for a few years in that fieldand then I think when I was 28,I came to work for my family business.

I got beaten up pretty well in the hospitality industryfor a good number of years before I came to the company.- It's good training though, don't you think, hospitality?It kinda grounds you in some real life serviceof customers and stuff.- It really does cause it's all about people, isn't it?It's all about service.It's about people and it's about making it happenevery single day and every single moment.